STOCKTAKING OF THE PRODI COMMISSION

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13 October 2004

Hudghton (Greens/EFA) - Mr President, your Commission is rightly proud of its role in the enlargement of the European Union. The European Free Alliance parties welcome our new neighbours and look forward to the day when our own countries - Scotland, Wales and Catalonia for example - can take their place at the top table as independent Member States. Five years ago, Mr Prodi, you spoke at some length about the need for the European Union to reconnect with its citizens. Until five years ago opinion polls showed there to be higher levels of public support for the EU in Scotland than in other parts of the UK. However, that support differential has now been eroded. One of the principal reasons for that is a policy that has been one of the European Union's biggest failures - the common fisheries policy. Your Commission had the task of reforming the CFP. You had an opportunity to give hope to Scotland's fishing communities, but instead you gave despair. You could have taken up proposals from this Parliament to establish meaningful, devolved, regional management of fisheries, but instead you promoted toothless advisory councils. The blame cannot be laid solely on the European Commission, as successive UK governments have repeatedly sacrificed Scotland's interests, but the final straw for my party - a pro-European party - was the illogical decision taken this year to include the CFP as one of only a handful of exclusive competences in the draft Constitution. With that clause remaining, we will be voting against the Constitution in any referendum. The Commission's end-of-term report, fisheries section, must therefore read 'failed'!